1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to apparatuses and methods (e.g., software programs) for musical tune playback controls on musical tune data recorded on digital audio media such as compact disks (CDs) and mini disks (MDs) in association with storage devices (e.g., hard disks). In addition, this invention also relates to digital audio media that store musical tune data to suit prescribed rules regarding musical tune playback controls.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, music playback apparatuses such as digital audio players allow users to selectively play back (or “reproduce”) desired musical tunes from among musical tunes stored in digital audio media (or digital storage media) such as CDs and MDs as well as DVDs (i.e., digital versatile disks). Generally, these apparatuses have various manipulators (e.g., switches and controls) allowing users to select desired musical tunes to be played back (or “reproduced”).
In the aforementioned apparatuses, however, it is necessary for users to select desired musical tunes each time when installing digital audio media therein. This may be very troublesome for users, particularly, inexperienced users, to select desired musical tunes with respect to each of digital audio media. For this reason, even though conventional apparatuses have pre-installed functions allowing users to arbitrarily select musical tunes from among musical tunes stored in digital audio media, users tend not to use these functions because of the difficulties in handling them. Recently, audio playback apparatuses are designed to have multiple functions so that the numbers of manipulators (e.g., switches and controls) are correspondingly increased; therefore, engineers must solve the aforementioned problem regarding users' difficulties in using tune selecting functions in audio playback apparatuses.